I grew up in Greater London and Hampshire, in southern
England. Before going to university in Reading, a town
on the River Thames, west of London, I spent a year working
at IBM's research laboratory in Hursley, England.
My undergraduate studies involved two summers working
in Arctic Norway on glaciers and meltwater streams, juxtaposed
with climbing holidays in the French Alps. My postgraduate
studies involved summer field seasons on the Arctic Islands
of Banks Island, Canada and Spitsbergen, north of Norway.
I recovered from these trips by climbing in Yosemite,
California and surfing on the Atlantic coast of France.
I received my Ph.D. from Reading University for a study
comparing modern Arctic rivers with river sediments that
were deposited in southern England during the Ice Age.
After receiving my Ph.D., I taught sedimentology in the
Geology Department of the University of Nottingham for
two years before spending the summer of 1984 in North
Greenland working for the Greenland Geological Survey.
After my summer in Greenland, I joined the Production
Geological Research Department of Shell International
in the Netherlands, where I worked for five years helping
develop Shell's 3D reservoir modeling system.
My wife Christine is from France. We met and got married
whilst living in the Netherlands, where our first son
Jonathan was born. We soon moved to New Zealand where
I worked for Shell New Zealand as a Senior Production
Geologist for four years. I worked in New Plymouth, a
small town at the foot of a volcano on the west coast
of the North Island. Our daughter, Bérénice
was born in New Zealand.
In 1993, I joined Schlumberger-Doll Research in Connecticut,
USA as a Senior Research Scientist. I have been project
leader for a major reservoir study in Venezuela and presently
lead a team developing new methods to model and monitor
oil and gas reservoirs.